


i find out who you are (i lose you in the dark)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, I can't lose you too, New Beginnings, Skoulson Romfest 2k16, mention of Lincoln/Daisy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 17:37:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5752207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skoulson RomFest 2k16 DAY 1 - 18 January - <em>"I can't lose you, too"</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	i find out who you are (i lose you in the dark)

When Coulson makes a request to be put back on active duty, Daisy's not surprised.

Mack approves the request, and maybe it's a bad call, but they need as many agents as they can get, and Coulson's made it clear he's not taking back the Director's role. (They don't have a psychiatrist to voice disapproval, Daisy thinks, and then bites her lip at it.) It's hard, though, working with him as an agent. Harder when she makes jokes that sink, when she catches the flat look in his eyes that's never been there before. Hardest when Lincoln makes it obvious he won't work with Coulson as a field partner, and Daisy can't help but be annoyed by that, feels it under her skin as an irritation that continues long after it should.

"This is ridiculous," Mack sighs to her one evening, and Daisy nods, hands him a beer and perches companionably on the edge of his desk.

"I hear you," she says. " _Director_." Mack groans.

"I mean," he continues, "look, it's just- I've got to work out how to make a workable team, right? This all, it's not working."

"No," Daisy agrees. "It's not."

"I'm going to assign Lincoln to work with May," Mack tells her. "She doesn't mind, and I want him kept in line with a senior member of the team - no offence, but he needs it."

"None taken," Daisy says, sips her beer. "Thanks for not assigning us as partners in the field." Mack stifles a chuckle, looks down at his plans again.

"If I partner with Joey," he says, pauses, glances up at her. "Would you work with Coulson?"

It shouldn't even be a question. But it is.

"Sure," Daisy says, as easily as she knows how. "Sure."

She tries not to feel the disappointment of losing Mack as her partner, knows that six months ago she would have jumped at the chance to work closer with Coulson. Six months ago, Coulson had handed her a file and it had seemed like she would.

 

+

 

They work together fine. Everything's fine. She and Lincoln are fine, until they're not, and it happens so suddenly Daisy's more surprised by it than anything else.

He goes to the Cocoon, and Daisy eats a lot of ice cream, holes up in her bunk with Bobbi and Jemma and some sappy movies. She doesn't expect Coulson to say anything about it - he doesn't say anything about much, these days - but she's surprised, again, when he clears his throat while they're holed up on mission, crouched side by side in the dim light of a basement.

"I..." he murmurs. "I'm sorry. That things didn't work out with you and Lincoln."

"Oh," is all Daisy can think to say. "Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Coulson."

"You know," he says, "you can probably still call me Phil. Since we're partners, and all."

"Oh," Daisy says again, and then, before she can help it, "even now you've finally worked out how not to call me Skye a hundred times a day?" Coulson  _laughs_ , his eyes sparkling with the joke, and that's surprising too. Suddenly, suddenly, he's right there with her in the half-light of the basement, the Phil Coulson she's been looking for. Daisy has to look away, has to bite her lip, doesn't want to frighten him back into silence.

"Yeah," he says, still smiling. "Yeah, even so."

"Well," she says, "okay.  _Phil_. You ready to bust this guy?"

"After you," Coulson says, gives her an appreciative look when she flexes her powers, and she can't breathe for how she's suddenly found him again under all the layers of grief.

 

+

 

Coulson - Phil - still gets that flat look sometimes, and she wonders if she should press him harder, encourage him to open up. He couldn't pull his hand away from hers, she thinks. She had to pull back. But if she reached out again now, and he closed her down, she knows it would sting harder, and maybe she's afraid, in the end. They're field partners, and they're making it work, and perhaps that's enough.

They're on a mission that seems simple. Just a two-agent extraction, potential Inhuman, potential team candidate. Daisy's confident, maybe over-confident, with Coulson at her back. They spot the girl at the same time; she's young, only in her teens, and Daisy smiles gently, opens her mouth to speak.

Then everything is blackness, and when she reaches for Coulson, he's gone.

"Coulson?" she tries, and then, louder, "Phil?"

There's nothing, and the darkness is absolute.

"Phil?" she says again, reaches out, casts around her, tries to bounce a vibration off the walls. There's nothing, and nothing, and then-  _Ward is there and he's reaching for her_ and Daisy recoils and  _Whitehall is strapping her to a table_ and Daisy shudders with it, screams, and  _her mother is smiling, smiling so gently, and she's crushing a crystal and Coulson-_

_Coulson-_

Daisy screams again, scrabbles backward, casts out her vibrations wider.

_Please_ , she begs,  _please, no, please_ , closes her eyes, opens them again to the darkness, and  _Coulson is crumbling into stone,_ and _Coulson is disappearing into the portal,_ and _Coulson is looking at her so flat and cold and hard,_ and-

Something brushes her hand and Daisy shudders again, hard, flings herself back and then reaches out in an effort of will, feels rough cotton against her fingertips.

"Skye?" Coulson whispers, grabs her, pulls her in, and Daisy sobs with relief, touches her fingers to a face she still can't see. His cheeks are wet with tears and Daisy clings to him as if he might disappear again.

"Phil," she breathes, "oh god, Phil, I-"

"What's doing this?" he asks, and she remembers the last time he asked her that with his voice so soft and afraid. She takes a breath, closes her eyes again, tries to calm herself down. 

"It's okay," she says, more to reassure herself than anything else. "It's okay. I just-" With her eyes closed, she realizes she can feel her surroundings again, can tap into the vibrations that have been missing. 

"Daisy,  _please_ ," Coulson says, and his voice has more than a little panic in it.

"I'll get us out," she tells him. "Just hold my hand."

It feels like forever that she's leading him out of the warehouse, blind and cautious. When they clear the building, blinking into the sudden light, it's only been five minutes, and Daisy feels like she's waking groggy and disoriented from a nightmare that wouldn't end. 

"Not a good potential for the team," she says, holding back  _I've never been so afraid in my life_ , and Coulson bites his lip, nods. "Are you... are you okay?" she asks, and he nods again, looks down at where their fingers are still tangled tight together, glances back at her.

"I think I need a drink," he says after a moment. "You want to join me?"

Daisy's never wanted anything more.

 

+

 

They're two scotches down when Coulson sets his glass down, touches her knee.

"I lost you in the dark," he says, and his voice shakes. "I- I saw-"

"I saw you die," Daisy tells him, trying to save him from having to say it. "And Ward, and Whitehall, and my mom, but- I saw you die. Did you-" Coulson nods, takes a deep breath, moves his hand from her knee to her cheek.

"I can't lose you too," he says. "I can't lose you again. I can't lose you like that, like  _that_ , I- Daisy, I-" His voice cracks and he blinks, looks away, grits his jaw. Daisy doesn't wait. Daisy doesn't let him wait for her to pull her hand back, this time. Daisy leans in, presses her lips against the twitch of muscle in his jaw.

"I'm right here," she whispers, "you're not going to lose me anywhere," and it's like her words open something that he's been holding back, because he makes a noise in the back of his throat that's almost a sob, pulls her into a kiss that feels desperate.

"I did, though," he says against her mouth, "I lost you so many times," and Daisy bites his lower lip, just a little.

"So you've found me," she says, "make it count."


End file.
